iPhone launch: a tale of two stores

Here’s a tip — if you only want one iPhone, and don’t care to wrestle with a giant blue-nosed mole (on the far right), head to an AT&T store.

So far it appears that Apple stores are developing into local meccas of the Apple faithful, the media savvy and those with lots of time on their hands. On the other hand, AT&T stores, where the phone will also begin sales at 6 P.M. locally, are well, home to the lonely.

At around 7 a.m. this morning in midtown Manhattan, here (above) is the Apple store, with a line 200 deep, not including at least 6 TV news trucks, an army of reporters and one, um, giant… animal…thing:

Contrast that with the handful of iPhone hopefuls at AT&T’s store in Times Square (below), so-called, “crossroads of the world.”

Contrast that with another AT&T store, on Manhattan’s ritzy Park Ave., where of the 5 men waiting on line at 7 AM EDT, none planned to keep the iPhone. Oddly enough, the first guy on line, Steve Millei, 35 (below, on far right) — there holding a place for a friend — said: “I don’t want one. I like the Nokia phones better.”

Read Reuters full coverage of the iPhone launch, with pictures, video and more, here.

I would love to get my hands on this to test it out in the non existent 3G network in India. But whatever you may say it has a lot of potential besides the usual worries of security, speed of connect(sorted out by AT&T) and of course the the unmistakable Apple style of knowing Multimedia. The Queues at Apple Stores are Fact that AT&T has a lot to learn.

Except for the fact that cingular stores have received as little as 20 units for stock, while the apple stores have thousands. i went by a local cingular store and after 45 minutes they had sold 25 units (taking a long time to sell 25 units) and they were out. i drove up to SF apple store and at 8pm they still had plenty and they were moving people in and out like wildfire. apple stores were definitely the best bet